A starving Indiana toddler desperately ate diapers and drywall before dying of horrific neglect — as his parents waited more than 14 hours to call 911, police said.
The emaciated, sore-riddled 2-year-old boy, Erik Reichard, was found dead by Tell City cops inside his home after his father, Trevor Reichard-Hayes, 39, finally called dispatchers March 31 to report the tot was blue in color and not breathing after his wife Katherine Carter, 31, found their child unresponsive, according to police.
The couple told cops the last time they’d seen their son alive was around 11 p.m. the day before, which was more than 14 hours before anyone dialed 911.
Arriving officers immediately started performing CPR on the tragic toddler on the living-room floor of the home, but Erik was pronounced dead at the scene by police just minutes later.
“The child was blue and pale,” a detective wrote in the probable cause affidavit against his parents, who have now been charged with murder over the boy’s death, according to PEOPLE.
“I could tell based on my training and experience that the child had been deceased for several hours,” the officer said.
Cops noted that the family, which included two other children, was living in deplorable conditions. They found feces on the floor in the two children’s rooms, as well as an abundance of drywall and paint chips on the floors, dirt, pieces of diapers lying everywhere, a training toilet “full of feces and urine” that appeared not to have been cleaned in weeks and an infestation of insects and bugs, according to the outlet.
The twisted couple’s own bedroom told an entirely different story, with it filled with nice, clean sheets on a neatly made bed surrounded by almost zero mess and no clutter, in stark contrast to the squalor their children were forced to live in, authorities said.
At the time of his death, Erik weighed just 15 pounds, roughly half of what a child his age should weigh — and his body was covered in more than 40 sores and bug bites, according to police.
The boy’s mother told police her son had been eating his own diapers, which cops suspected he had done out of pure desperation from being starved.
An autopsy confirmed Erik had consumed the dry-wall chips and diaper pieces scattered throughout his room, with his colon containing a “foreign gel-like substance” and small white pieces consistent with diaper material, drywall, paint chips and even spackling from the home.
His cause of death was determined to be severe malnourishment and dehydration as a result of neglect.
The couple’s two other children that were also found in the home were removed by the Indiana Department of Child Services.
One was hospitalized for severe malnutrition and dehydration, according to Fox 5 Vegas.
Reichard-Hayes and Carter were arrested April 3 and charged with murder and multiple counts of various types of neglect that lead to the boy’s death.
Carter is due back in court May 14, while Reichard-Hayes has a hearing scheduled for May 28.
